


The Necessity of Invention

by AndreaLyn



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-22
Updated: 2011-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 20:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>They forget the point man that helped revolutionize the dream-world and only remember Eames and his versatility.</i> In which Arthur & Eames change the way dream-sharing works twiceover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Necessity of Invention

Arthur first meets Eames when they are each handpicked by their respective governments in order to be test subjects for the newest wave of dream-sharing technology. Stabbing and shooting is simple enough and the architects they’ve hired have created worlds-aplenty. Now, they’ve begun to see what they can do about populating these worlds with specific marks.

“It’s a real opportunity, Captain,” his superior officer informs him one day in the sort of heavy tone that gives away how important this assignment is. “The British are sending over one of their own. I want you to do your country proud.”

“Sir,” Arthur says with a firm salute, “yes, sir!”

This is how he gets roped into a strange meeting in a shack of a room. The walls are practically falling down and if it weren’t for Major Mackenzie – one of the Army’s biggest proponents of dream-sharing as an exercise – and the presence of a PASIV, Arthur might have begun to think this is all a great big con.

He spares one more thought to the validity of this whole exercise when the liaison from England arrives. He doffs his cap and winks at Arthur, adjusting his fatigues as he enters the room. “Lieutenant William Eames, at your service,” he introduces himself. “I hear you Yanks have got a spot of experimenting to do. I do love a good journey into the unknown,” he goes on lasciviously, shaking both the Major and Arthur’s hands a moment too long.

If this is the best that England has, Arthur worries about the United States’ allies, quite frankly.

Two months later when they’re deep into the test runs and the practice attempts, Lieutenant Eames has made off with the dream-sharing device and Arthur has been honourably discharged due to a dream incident that involved one of his fellow soldiers dropping into limbo and killing himself in reality. The Army has dismissed the dream-sharing project at the cost of the risks, stating that their soldiers will just have to learn how to kill a man through simulations in the real-world.

Limbo, it turns out, is too much of a risk to continue employing the PASIV. Arthur moves on, keeps his guns and his military sense, and starts to work in the line of bringing criminals to justice and getting paid for it.

He’s currently in the middle of a job when he meets up again with Lieutenant Eames in an open-air bar in Greece.

Eames has a silver suitcase in hand and Arthur has a pistol aimed at his head.

“Hello there,” Eames brightly says. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Of all the Parthenons...” Arthur deadpans.

“Something like that, yes,” Eames contributes, tapping his fingers rapidly on the briefcase. “If I were to say I needed your help, would you believe me?”

“How quickly can you convince me?” Arthur’s still got the safety off and wouldn’t see it as too much of a tragedy if he had to shoot.

Eames doesn’t even look frightened. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt with loose khakis and seems at ease with his surroundings, even if the gun pointed at his forehead and his tight grip of the briefcase at his torso belies that calmness. “The army missed something.”

“Which Army?” Arthur coolly asks, not entirely enamoured with his own at the moment.

“Yours, mine, both, does it matter? I need help,” Eames says. “I’ve stumbled onto something that no one in the world has ever done before, but I can’t do it alone. Besides, is the bounty on my head really worth it?”

The bounty on his head is worth five-hundred thousand dollars.

It is _entirely_ worth it.

Arthur’s curiosity undoes him in the end, though, and he lowers the gun, nodding towards the five-star hotel looming above them. “You have one hour of dream-time to convince me,” he says curtly, holstering his pistol and pressing a hand to Eames’ back, right atop a garish pattern that hides all that tanned skin the surveillance photos had shown him.

They end up in a room that is far too luxurious for Arthur to be comfortable in. He’s making his way back to the private sector, but he’s used to beds in the desert and camouflage. High-thread-count sheets are not one of the things he spent his nights in the army missing.

“One hour of dreaming or one hour of dream time,” Eames clarifies as he begins to mix compounds that he slides out from under the bed. “Do learn to be specific, darling. You’ll be swindled horrifically for your vagaries if you’re not.”

“That word doesn’t mean what you think it means,” Arthur replies, his lips twitching upwards as he fights the impulse to smile at the madman across from him.

They work professionally and quietly with the compounds. Eames mixes them and Arthur adjusts the calibration of the machine.

“Can I trust you?”

“You can program the settings of the machine,” Eames allows. “If you want to pull a fast one and haul me in, just adjust the timer and you can point that gun anywhere you like on my body.”

“For a man who’s known for his self-preservation, you’re acting pretty stupidly right now,” Arthur notes, swabbing his arm carefully as he settles in a chair.

He looks up in time to see the look of sheer wonder on Eames’ face and has to stop to think about what this idea could be that would have Eames set aside his desire to save himself and to all-but-leap into a bounty hunter’s arms.

“Trust me,” he says. “Once I get this perfected, dream-sharing will never be the same.” He settles in a chair directly beside Arthur. “And you’re going to help me perfect it.”

It’s the last thing he says before, with the arm attached to the line, he reaches over and depresses the button, sending them into a fairly blank canvas of a dream. Neither Arthur nor Eames had ever been architects, so the best they manage is a non-descript street. They both know how to keep their own projections out and so it’s deserted, leaving the two of them to work.

Arthur starts wandering the wrong way down a one-way street and when he turns to ask what Eames intends on doing, he stops in his tracks.

“...Eames?”

Where Eames was, there’s now a woman. Or, at least, Arthur thinks it’s a woman. There’s long hair and the shape of the body, but her face seems malleable and every time he stares too hard, it’s like she flickers and Eames is standing there all over.

“Eames,” Arthur warily says, stepping closer. “What’s going on? Is this a glitch in the compounds?”

The woman slowly takes form and then Arthur begins to understand.

“You’re manipulating the architecture of your own body,” says Arthur, gaping.

“I thought I might call it something a little _neater_ ,” Eames replies, the words coming out in a fluid and melodic female tone. “Forging, perhaps?” Arthur is swept up in staring at the face, the expression, the flawless body, and for a long moment his breath is absolutely stolen from him because he’s standing on the precipice of something inventive and new – something he never even considered before. “Look at you,” Eames all-but-purrs. “You’re practically salivating.”

“Let’s work on tricking a mark,” Arthur says, trying to keep his voice steady even in the face of Eames’ actual (surprising) genius.

He brings about mirrors in the dream and they sit there with Eames as he starts to shift through skins like it’s second nature. At one point, they turn to Arthur and try to get him to forge former acquaintances, strangers, familial relations, and absent crushes. Eames prods and pokes and barks directions, but no matter what gambit they try, Arthur always fails to grasp some aspect. His mind overworks and it brings him back to himself.

Eames sighs and Arthur hates the bite of disappointment that comes with it.

“Don’t fucking look at me like I’m an idiot for not grasping it,” he swears when Eames flawlessly and easily shifts into an identical copy of Arthur – complete with disapproving brow ridge. He leans forward and slides his fingers through Eames’ hair – disguised currently as _Arthur’s_ hair and when he tugs, he feels the exact same amount of gel he put in this morning.

It’s on par with an architect getting the design of a room right, down to the fabric of the couches and curtains.

Arthur’s breath goes missing once more and he gapes at Eames, like he has no business being this intelligent for being a cocky conman who just runs out on his government. “Eames,” he breathes out, choking out the awe required for accomplishing a task like this.

His hand is still in Eames’ hair when he shifts back to himself and offers Arthur something like a shyly proud smile. “I’m not half bad at some things, am I?”

And because Arthur has always been turned on by competency, because he’s standing here witnessing flawless shifts of genius and wonder, because he’s in on the ground floor of a concept that’s going to revolutionize shared dreaming and he has Eames to thank, he darts forward and kisses Eames hard enough to leave a mark.

Arthur is going to pretend that no matter how Eames shifts in the dream now, he’ll have that lovely little bruise on his lower lip from Arthur’s teeth.

They pioneer new territory together and Arthur commemorates their genius by shoving Eames onto the hotel bed at night and pinning him down with eager knees, watching as Eames goes from a man he would’ve turned in for a reward to a _partner_ in crime. He starts to recommend Eames for jobs when Cobb asks for a thief.

“I’ve got something better,” Arthur assures confidently and breathes out Eames’ name reverently, like he’s something else entirely.

It’s too easy to believe that when they dive into dreams together in the privacy of their own time and minds and Arthur watches Eames do what Arthur could never – become someone else down to their skin and their story and wear it like other people do their tailored suits.

He wears it to perfection and Arthur bears his pride.

The dream-sharing community begins to talk and Arthur revels in feeding stories and information. Slowly, forgery becomes an accepted tactic and Eames is the original forger – the best of them all.

*

At the start, everyone knows that it was _Eames & Arthur, Arthur & Eames_ who pioneered forging, who made it into a tactic used to weave through dreams unnoticed, to add a new maze to the mind that didn’t involve walls and corridors.

Inevitably though, the years go by and Arthur works point and Eames forges and their reputation dwindles because they work apart – because Arthur does not mix business and pleasure, because Arthur refuses to bring Eames onto his team unless it’s absolutely necessary, because he and Eames fuck more than they work when put in the same room together.

And so slowly that Arthur barely sees it happening, _slowly_ , the community forgets Arthur. They forget the point man that helped revolutionize the dream-world and only remember Eames and his versatility. Even Cobb is guilty of it, calling Eames to ask technical questions about forging when Arthur is right there. At least Cobb has the good sense to look guilty for it afterwards.

They perform inception and Arthur grinds his teeth after the fact when Ariadne praises Eames for his forgeries and Eames accepts the praise with his version of modesty – a heavy amount of visible pride – and never mentions Arthur once when it comes to the roots of the technique.

Arthur feels as though he’s justified, then, in picking up his bags and attempting to leave the airport bar without goodbyes.

It’s only foiled when Eames catches up to him, light hand on his shoulder. “Arthur,” he says quietly. “I need your help.”

Arthur’s curiosity gets the best of him and he turns in order to regard Eames and wonder what it is this time, when he doesn’t have a gun pressed to Eames’ temple in the shadow of ancient Greek architecture.

“What is it this time, Mr. Eames?” he sighs out, like it’s a great challenge to even be speaking to him.

“Well, Arthur,” Eames remarks calmly, as if in direct retort to Arthur’s impatient tone, “I wanted to revolutionize the world of forging and seeing as how I can’t do it without you, I need your help. Are you in or are you out?”

So here Arthur stands looking down the scope at yet another development into an area that he could be forgotten for. It’s useless to ignore it, though, because just like Ariadne couldn’t keep away in the face of pure creation, Arthur can’t turn his back on genuine inspiration and invention.

This time, he simply might have to tweak the stories so that his name comes first, that the point man is a prominent feature in the role of whatever new idea Eames has.

Arthur gives a small nod of his head and Eames wastes little time in getting the PASIV ready in a hotel room. It’s been a long time since they were behind closed doors just the two of them and it’s not because of a fight or because of some immature action on Eames’ part or Arthur ignoring him. They’ve simply been busy and Eames had taken to hiding in Mombasa and because of Cobol, Arthur couldn’t follow.

They descend into the dream and as Eames is wont to do, he flexes his forgery muscles and flickers through several variations before settling on his real form.

“You said you had a new idea,” prompts Arthur and halfway through the sentence, he grows horrified because his voice _isn’t_ recognizable and when he stares down at himself, he sees a petite woman’s body. When he looks in the nearby mirror – a fixture in Eames’ dreams now – he sees a young woman standing there and staring at him, all too similar to what Arthur’s sister looks like. “Eames!” he snaps.

“Why shouldn’t forgery be like architecture?” Eames posits from the chair he’s comfortably reclined in. He has a leg crossed over his other and touches his lips with his fingers from time to time, making gestures in Arthur’s direction.

Every gesture accompanies a slight change in Arthur’s body, clothing, or general demeanour. The short bob haircut becomes long dark curls and the black suit becomes a little red dress. “Eames,” Arthur growls out again.

“Forgery doesn’t have to be contained to the singular,” Eames says, a brilliant spark of interest in his eyes. “Forgery should be as creative and intuitive in a talented person’s mind as architecture.” He settles both feet on the ground and when Arthur glances back to the mirror, he’s himself again. “I want you to try it.”

In the back of his mind, Arthur has to wonder...

“Did you invent all this because of me?”

“It doesn’t take a genius to notice you were upset that the dream-sharing community forgot you,” Eames says quietly and Arthur feels his stomach begin to turn and tumble, “This is right up your alley, darling.”

“Are you doing this for me?”

Eames stays silent. Arthur realizes that he’s never wanted to kiss Eames more than he does at this very moment. He says nothing and does nothing, keeps Eames in his own skin – because Arthur’s job is information and if he can build a paradox for a maze, then he can easily outfit someone with information, build them from the ground up in an amalgamation of habits and traits.

Arthur leans forward, pressing one knee to the couch and slowly easing closer to Eames, his arm around his neck. Eames rests one hand on the small of Arthur’s back and coaxes him in, just enough for the lightest of long kisses.

Arthur pulls away and even though he’s grinning, he pushes at Eames’ chest, an accusatory laugh bubbling past his lips. “I don’t need your pity.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t need you to invent something just because you want to give me something to do.”

“That, I know, as well.”

Arthur pauses and indulges in just one more kiss. “...but thank you,” he goes on, grateful and quiet. “For thinking of me.”

“I find it disappointing to discover you don’t know that I _always_ think of you.”

Arthur’s whole dream might well have lost gravity at that point for the way he feels absolutely breathless and falling without anything at all there to stop him from crashing – anything but Eames, that is.

He gives in and lets the heady sensation of creation and innovation take over and he forges for Eames in this dreamscape. He adjusts features and turns him into personalities they’ve seen before, old friends, and guilty pleasures. They do this for hours and Eames seems no less exhausted than when he started and Arthur feels breathless with possibilities.

When he wakes from out of the dream, he knows that he’s staring at Eames with something like wonder and possibly the hints of fond infatuation, as though it took invention for it to bubble to the surface.

Eames, drowsy as always as he comes up, simply takes the time to look at Arthur with fondness in return. “I do so love the way you look when you’re enraptured by an idea,” he drowsily comments.

“What can I say,” Arthur speaks up past the lump in his throat, “you bring it out of me best.”

And Arthur may be five hundred thousand dollars in bounty poorer, but he doesn’t see the sense in hurting about it when Eames has presented him whole new worlds at his fingertips.


End file.
